LJ Idol - Topic 8 - Unprepared

[aggienaut]

   Imagine, if you would, there is a bee crawling up your leg. Inside your pants, on your skin, up your leg. In fact, imagine there are several. There are bees on your arms, in your hair, there may be one on your nose. And the air around you is filled with bees. Angry bees. You're standing in three inches of mud, and as soon as a grizzly farmer comes down the ramp with a beehive (cursing a blue streak as he gets stung), you will run up the ramp towards where the bees are thickest, hoist up a sixty pound hive, and carry it back down the ramp to plop it in the mud next to other hives. You will get stung.

   This is how I got stung 130 times in one night last February.


   The math had added up to the bees being docile. When we picked them up while it was snowing in Redding they had been docile, and it was now probably less than 54 fahrenheit, which usually means bees aren't very active. So we didn't bother to put suits on. However we forgot to take into account that we had just jostled the bees over three miles of bumpy muddy road to get to this particular piece of farmland in the middle of California's Central Valley. We were definitely not prepared for what happened when we pulled the tarp off the trailer full of beehives. The bees angrily billowed out with a vengeance. Two farmhands ran for their lives and weren't seen again for the rest of the night.


   We had gotten a killer deal on the bees. $45 a hive right at the start of almond season. The beekeeper selling them in Redding was retiring, due to the loss of his third finger to beekeeping equipment (someone told me at convention that its less common now that most people have their boxes made by professional woodworkers rather than make them themselves, but it used to be that most of the guys at convention would be missing at least one finger!). Almond pollinating is currently the most lucrative thing to do in beekeeping -- last year we got $125 a hive simply for having our hives in Almond fields from February 1st through April 1st. So we bought 100 hives for $45 each and drove them straight to the almond staging area where we got $125 for each one. Thats how you turn $4500 into $12,500 in 8 hours. ;D

   The pass at the southern end of the Central Valley we needed to use to get home was snowed in, and the road was snowed in north of Redding, with the possibility of closures moving south of Redding, so while we were never directly in much snow, we were surrounded and potentially stranded by it.

   To coordinate between beekeepers and farmers in need of pollination, there are Bee Brokers. They seem to usually be large beekeepers themselves, who have been at it for a very long time and just have all the connections. Bee brokers get about $7 a hive (a hive broked?), and can coordinate tens to even hundreds of thousands of hives.
   It was to the bee broker's yard we (Dr Steven Theones & I) were moving our bees. When we got there the yard manager apparently hadn't been expecting us that night and was already drunk. He was a comically grizzly farmer type -- overalls, plaid longsleeved shirt, extremely bushy beard, and he had this kinda farmer drawl, he "jist tawked kin'da sl'ow."

   So like I said, we hadn't put suits on. The farmhands fled, Dr Theones & I hurriedly put suits on, and the yard manager was already drunk and mostly covered (and extremely grizzly) so he just cussed a lot. At this point, however, we were already covered in bees (in the dark bees tend to crawl A LOT), so we were putting the suits on over the bees that were already on us. Additionally, in the dark and being in a hurry it was useless to try to zip the veil on, so that major gap remained.
   One just had to work through the stings. I had bees crawling over EVERY inch of my body. ::looks dead serious:: EVERYWHERE.


   Extrapolating from the number of stingers we pulled out of my arms, legs and neck, we made a rough estimate of 130 as to the number of stings I received. The lethal dose of bee stings is said to be 10 per pound of body weight, so this would have been approximately 10% of a lethal dose for me. It felt kinda like.. having a really really bad sunburn. I could barely move for the next 24 hours (which didn't stop me from helping move a second load of bees a day later).


   If I learned anything from the experience its probably the opposite of what you'd expect. Now I know how much WORSE things could be so I DON'T bother to suit up if I'm "only" expecting a dozen or so beestings. Thats nothing.


This story eclipses my previous best stories of being unprepared for things happening at work, such as: (1) being sucked into a wave machine intake; and (2) being flushed down 200 feet of piping because someone didn't realize I was in there and turned on the water.

Comments

[colt-4-5.livejournal.com]

Talk about an occupational hazard! Even on the best of times a bee sting hurts like a sonofabitch, but getting that many jeez! do you get used to it?

Getting Used to Stings

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I mean, 130 leaves you pretty dang sore. But now I barely notice when I get one or two. I got seven the other day, two of which were on my face, and felt 100% a-okay .. however I remember a few years ago I got 12 in one day on my legs and thought I was suffering!

[lordrexfear.livejournal.com]

wow... quite the story man. I was stung once in my life by a bee.

On the bottom of the foot.

I can't even imagine how you aren't a mass of scars and disgust. Unless... are you?

[birgitriddle]

o.o Wow, you're braver than I could ever be. Then again, I have a bee phobia and they scare me to death. I just try to avoid them as much as I can and hope they don't come into my home.

(I don't kill bees unless they are in my home because, you know, they're important, but if it's in my house, I'm going to freak out and even if I knew how to get the bee out of the house, my panicked mind would likely be unable to think of it.)

[roina-arwen.livejournal.com]

Boy howdy, that seems like a great way to make some money, but I don't think I could do it! Yowch!

[boxsofrain.livejournal.com]

Great entry!

I think I just died a little inside. I am thinking about getting stung like twice. You had to pull stingers out of you. That is freaky.

[furzicle.livejournal.com]

Oh c'mon people. Now a bee sting is not fun, but on the other hand it's not such a big deal, either.
I'd say it's on a par with a paper cut. Well, a really owy paper cut.

Some people even inflict themselves with bee stings on purpose!

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

The getting sucked into a wave machine intake I made a vague reference to left a scar on my back like I'd been barbequed, but bee stings don't.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

One person working full time can run 800 hives. At $125 each thats $100,000 between April and February, and then there's honey production and pollinating other things. There's money in that shit!!

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

I hear some people panic when a bee enters their car ;)

[agirlnamedluna.livejournal.com]

Candyman.

Terror.

ARGH

[pouncing-tiger.livejournal.com]

Holy Smokes! What a story!

I think bee keeping is cool though. =)

[blueashke.livejournal.com]

I've been getting more and more fascinated with your line of work during this competition. Methinks I'll have to pick your brain sometime, given that you're here in my home state anyway.

[popfiend.livejournal.com]

You are a braver man than I.

[roina-arwen.livejournal.com]

Sweeeeeet! ;)

[jenandbronze.livejournal.com]

OW OW OW OW OW OW!

That... HURTS!

Okay you beat me from the wasp bite, I had on my head a few years ago. I hate insects, since I can't see or hear them! I hate when they buzz right near my hearing aids...

*shiver*

I can see how unprepared you were for this!

OW OW OW OW OW!

*cringe*

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

(= Its certainly an interesting line of work at least. I've worked in offices before ... I'm never going back! (okay thats probably not true)

[blueashke.livejournal.com]

You're down south in CA right? Not up here in the Bay Area where it's always foggy?

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Yeah I've always had an affinity for bees. I never would have guessed I'd end up being a beekeeper but in elementry school I used to pick up bees in my hands as all the other kids ran away screaming.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Hella stingers!!

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Candyman?

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Yeah its fun. Gettign stung isn't really that bad. Unless they get you in the nose augh!

A Wasp Story

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

My boss has a funny wasp story.

He got a call once by someone saying every time people rang their doorbell a wasp would come sting them in the face. Knowing that wasps aren't ACTUALLY that aggressive, he didn't really believe the story.

He came to their house to check out the wasp problem anyway. Walked up to the door, rang the doorbell, and A WASP STUNG HIM IN THE FACE!!

Turns out the wasps were living IN THE DOORBELL. O=

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

I was up there last week, Tahoe, Davis, and Berkeley, but this week I was in Orange County, and now I'm going to Atlanta, Georgia, till Sunday (=

[blueashke.livejournal.com]

Ah, cool! One time if you're going to be in SF, there should be alcohol and much LJ laughter.

Ask roina_arwen, I know how to show an LJer a good time... as long as there's karaoke.